tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-297637912015-03-30T01:08:00.296-06:00Delenda est CarthagoObligatory Disclaimer: If what I write doesn't describe you, then I'm not talking about you.Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.comBlogger1220125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-52470559182519820532015-03-30T01:08:00.000-06:002015-03-30T01:08:00.305-06:00The Diet that Dare Not Speak Its Name<p>From the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2933841/Your-child-jihadist-ve-stopped-eating-baguettes-Bizarre-French-government-infographic-shows-way-spot-radical-Islamists.html">Daily Mail</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>'Your child could be a jihadist if they've stopped eating baguettes': Bizarre French government infographic shows way to spot radical Islamists</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Here is the poster:</p> <p><img alt="Warning: the French government infographic offers nine telltale signs to worried parents&#160;" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/30/253347A100000578-0-image-a-21_1422657950404.jpg" width="473" height="648" /></p> <p>Except that, according to Google, “Ils changent brutalement leurs habitudes alimentaires” translates to “They abruptly change their eating habits.”&#160; That doesn’t have anything to do with bagettes; in the current context, it means suddenly observing Sharia dietary restrictions, an obvious sign of radicalization.</p> <p>Unfortunately, rather than illustrating this with a picture of, say, a pig, they tried to appease Muslim sensibilities with a double-bankshot reference to food in general . . . and wound up looking a little ridiculous.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-49207965175637022122015-03-23T01:38:00.000-06:002015-03-23T01:38:00.426-06:00Makeup and Future-time Orientation<p>Chaeteau, commenting on a <a href="http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-01-cosmetics-effect-judgments-identity.html">study</a> measuring makeup’s only limited ability to improve attractiveness, <a href="https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/study-makeup-doesnt-do-much/">writes</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>It’s not surprising, then, that men and women will breathlessly grasp at the slimmest advantages to tilt the sexual market playing field in their favor, where the only game that matters is played, and played for a zero sum outcome in a battle as pitched, if not quite as bloody, as any war for survival. It’s why women will color their faces, despite receiving little benefit and less still the morning-after when the ruse is smeared off, for an infinitesimally small leg up over their female competition.</p> <p>The stakes are that high.</p> </blockquote> <p>Except there are only so many hours in a day.&#160; What I find noteworthy (and frustrating during those happily long-passed times that it affected me personally) is that with the amount of time that some women spend in front of a mirror, they could improve their attractiveness far more with <strong>exercise</strong>.&#160; That 30 – 60 minutes or whatever, on a day-to-day basis, spent in a gym, would be an SMV enhancer in a way that makeup accomplishes for only a tiny minority of women.*</p> <p>Of course, the effect is only cumulative.&#160; Any <em>particular</em> 60 minutes spent exercising isn’t going to give a woman anything like the 2% they allegedly get from makeup.&#160; Exercising 60 minutes a day for a <em>month</em> will get you the 2%.&#160; Exercising 60 minutes a day for a <em>year</em> will give you a 20%, two full SMV points.</p> <p>But that kind of calculus requires conscientiousness, a.k.a. “future-time orientation.”&#160; It doesn’t speak well of women who spend more time at makeup for +2% than they do at exercise for +20% simply because the payoff takes longer to realize.</p> <p>* If it needs saying, then yes, men can be fat too.&#160; But leaving aside whether being in good shape, in and of itself, improves a man’s SMV as much as it improves a woman’s, I struggle to think of any male analogue to <em>makeup.</em>&#160; Unless we define it so broadly as to encompass . . . well, <em>everything</em> a man ever does.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-15691255006013160682015-03-19T19:20:00.000-06:002015-03-19T19:20:17.402-06:00"A thousand strands of time . . ."<p><a href="http://odb.org/2015/03/19/a-place-to-be/">Tonight's <i>Daily Bread</i></a> devotional was exceptionally poetic. After reading from Nehemiah 1, wherein Nehemiah expresses his lament at Israel's <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Nehemiah%201&version=NKJV">lack of border control</a>, ODB had this to say:<br />
<br />
<blockquote><p>A thousand strands of time, events, and people weave into a tapestry we call <b>place</b>. More than just a house, place is where meaning, belonging, and safety come together under the covering of our best efforts at unconditional love. Place beckons us with memories buried deep in our souls. Even when our place isn’t perfect, its hold on us is dramatic, magnetic.<br />
<p>The Bible speaks frequently of place. We see an example in Nehemiah’s longing for a restored Jerusalem (Neh. 1:3-4; 2:2). It’s no surprise, then, that Jesus would speak of place when He wants to comfort us. “Let not your heart be troubled,” He began. Then He added: “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:1-2).</blockquote><br />
<p>Read the whole thing.Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-44912095882294395832015-03-16T01:14:00.000-06:002015-03-16T01:14:00.280-06:00Air Force Diversity<p>From the desk of Deborah Lee James, the <a href="http://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/SECAF/FINALDiversity_Inclusion_Memo2.pdf">2015 Diversity &amp; Inclusion (D&amp;I) Initiatives</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Promotion Board Memorandum of Instruction (MOI):</strong>&#160; Through a MOI, the Secretary of the Air Force provides specific instructions to board members for every officer promotion and federal recognition board to ensure only the best qualified officers are selected for promotion or recognition.&#160; In addition to seeking officer demonstrating commitment to the welfare of our Airmen and to our core values of Integrity, Service, and Excellence, board members are instructed to find officers who have demonstrated that they will nurture and lead in a diverse and inclusive Air Force culture.</p> </blockquote> <p>I’m skeptical that Ms. James really believes her service lacks leadership.&#160; I suspect that she is looking for an end run around the <a href="http://www.adversity.net/military_older_news.htm">legal precedents from the 1990s</a> that limited racial quotas in promotion boards.&#160; I suspect that participation in various <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2013/10/tax-dollars-at-work-and-play.html">Diversity Days</a> will be taken as evidence for the ability to “nurture and lead in a diverse and inclusive culture”.&#160; Since these ceremonies are radioactive to healthy white men by design, they become a screening tool for minorities and self-hating liberals.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Increased Female Officer Applicant Pool:</strong>&#160; Despite a rich pool of talent across our Nation, our female officer applicants typically comprise only 25 percent of our applicant pool.&#160; Therefore, we have set an applicant pool goal of 30 percent for our officer accession sources.&#160; This goal will encourage our accession sources to more aggressively compete for our Nation’s top female talent and encourage the next generation of innovative leaders to apply for our officer corps.&#160; The female officer population was selected as a starting point, as it is a smaller group than the enlisted force on which to focus efforts.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is pushing responsibility for the quota game downward.&#160; I’m not sure what “aggressively compete” means in this context, but I’m sure that if it goes legally sideways, Ms. James will insist that she never TOLD her recruiters to discriminate against white men.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Post-Pregnancy Deployment Deferment</strong>:&#160; some of our most talented Airmen are choosing to leave the Air Force because they are struggling to balance deployments and family issues, especially soon after childbirth.&#160; Since our families are a source of strength and resilience for our Airmen, we are looking to increase our current six month Post-Pregnancy Deployment Deferment to one year.&#160; According to analysis at the aggregate level, the overall impact on manning and deployment levels will be negligible.</p> </blockquote> <p>“Overall”, perhaps.&#160; But the impact won’t be “negligible” on the men who now have to spend 15% – 20% more of their careers deployed than they did before to take up the slack.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-40285534647609043112015-03-09T01:06:00.000-06:002015-03-09T01:06:00.485-06:00“Nice Guy” Alert<p>From the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Sniper-Autobiography-Military-History/dp/0062238868">autobiography</a> of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, describing his courtship of the future Mrs. Kyle:</p> <blockquote> <p>Taya was working as a drug rep from a pharmaceutical company when we met.&#160; Originally from Oregon, she’d gone to college in Wisconsin and moved out to the coast a couple of years before we met.&#160; My first impression was that she was beautiful, even if she looked pissed off about something.&#160; We started talking, and I also found out she was smart, and had a good sense of humor.</p> <p>I sensed right away that maybe she was someone who could keep up with me.&#160; But, maybe she should tell the story.&#160; Her version sounds better than mine.</p> <p>Taya:</p> <blockquote> <p>I remember the night we met; some of it at least.&#160; I wasn’t going to go out; this was all during a low spot in my life.&#160; My days were spent in a job I didn’t like.&#160; I was fairly new in town and still looking for some solid female friendships.&#160; And I was casually dating guys, with not much success.&#160; Over the years I’d had some decent relationships and a couple of bad ones with a few dates in between.&#160; I remember literally praying to God before I met Chris to just send me a <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2011/12/lies-damned-lies-and-i-just-want-nice.html">nice guy</a>.&#160; Nothing else mattered, I thought.&#160; I just prayed for someone who was inherently good and . . . nice.</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>Chris would go on to achieve 160 confirmed kills as a sniper during four tours in the Iraq War.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-58822410816038478732015-03-02T01:17:00.000-07:002015-03-02T01:17:00.350-07:00BLEG: Google Navigator TTS<p>As if I didn’t have enough aggravation . . .</p> <p>My <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2014/07/tech-review-samsung-galaxy-s5.html">Galaxy S5</a> has two voice options for its text-to-speech (TTS) function:&#160; the Samsung Voice (warm and sultry) and the Google Voice (chirpy and efficient).&#160; When I purchased the phone, the default setting was the Samsung Voice, which I had come to prefer.&#160; Unfortunately, about a month ago, the TTS for the Google Navigator application unexpectedly switched to the Google Voice.&#160; This despite the phone’s TTS setting (under “Language and Input”) still set to Samsung Voice.</p> <p>Google Navigator is the only application with which I ever use TTS, so it is disappointing that it has started using Google Voice irrespective of the phone’s global setting.&#160; Does anyone have any idea how to get Navigator to change TTS voices?</p> <p>Thanks in advance.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-90023825369857887702015-02-23T01:18:00.000-07:002015-02-23T01:18:00.294-07:00How much atonement?<p>Ross Douthat <a href="http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/president-obama-and-whig-history/">cites</a> Rod Dreher’s <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/isis-american-south-lynching/">response</a> to Douthat’s <a href="http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/the-case-against-the-case-against-the-crusades/">earlier reaction</a> to Obama’s remarks about the Crusades.&#160; All of the articles are required reading.</p> <p>Dreher:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>The New York Times</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/us/history-of-lynchings-in-the-south-documents-nearly-4000-names.html">wrote</a> today on a new research report by an organization that has been studying lynching, and has documented almost 4,000 acts of extrajudicial murder by white mobs from the years 1877-1950. Most, but not all, of the deeds took place in the South. Five of the top 10 counties for lynching are in my home state, Louisiana. <a href="http://www.eji.org/files/EJI%20Lynching%20in%20America%20SUMMARY.pdf">Here is a summary of the Equal Justice Initiative’s report.</a> </p> </blockquote> <p>EJI’s contribution was to identify several hundred additional lynching cases.&#160; The previous total from the Tuskegee Institute was 4743, of which some 3446 were of black.&#160; Note that the EJI’s report considers <em>only</em> blacks, and <em>only</em> the South.</p> <p>Dreher quotes from the summary:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Lynchings Based on Fear of Interracial Sex.</strong> Nearly 25 percent of the lynchings of African Americans in the South were based on charges of sexual assault. The mere accusation of rape, even without an identification by the alleged victim, could arouse a lynch mob. The definition of black-on-white “rape” in the South required no allegation of force because white institutions, laws, and most white people rejected the idea that a white woman would willingly consent to sex with an African American man.</p> </blockquote> <p>Dreher concludes:</p> <blockquote> <p>We all need to know these things, and face down what our ancestors did. These weren’t Crusaders sacking Constantinople. These were our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, doing it to the fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers of our black neighbors. Attention must be paid. That may be the only atonement available now, but it’s better than what we have had, which is nothing.</p> </blockquote> <p>If it needs be stated, I will (<a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-lynching-of-george-meadows-part-i.html">again</a> and <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2010/10/limits-of-noblesse-oblige.html">again</a>):&#160; I am opposed to extrajudicial murder as an inherent violation of the Constitution’s due-process protections.&#160; And I will add to that that I am opposed to torturing people to death in all circumstances.&#160; (As Dreher points out, many of the murders described in the EJI’s summary would do ISIS proud.)</p> <p>But the problem with Dreher’s call to atonement is that it never specifies exactly when the heirs (if heirs they actually be) of the murderers of century past can be assured that their accounts are settled.&#160; Here Dreher is asking for “attention”.&#160; Yet the inclusion of lynching, and the mistreatment of American blacks in general, is a staple of history curricula at all levels of education across the country.&#160; My own daughter is finally having her first public school class in American history, yet over the last three years consideration of slavery, segregation, and the Civil Rights movement have dominated the <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-secular-saints-go-marching-on.html">assigned</a> (and <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2013/04/rosas-are-red-violence-ensues.html">unassigned</a>) readings in both her Social Studies and her English lessons.&#160; You will fail to find <em>any</em> public figure <em>anywhere</em> who would call for as much nuance in our treatment of lynching as I do here.&#160; How much attention does Dreher think is enough?</p> <p>EJI and Dreher both want us to generalize from the numbers to characterize lynching as an <em>especially</em> Southern and racist phenomenon.&#160; But I have a generalization of my own:&#160; the majority of lynching victims were accused of heinous crimes that then merited the death penalty.&#160; The EJI summary as quoted above does its best to obscure this – rape is only “sexual assault” is only “fear of interracial sex” – but EJI itself apparently found only a few hundred cases of lynching for mere social protocol violations.</p> <p>I would also point out that the racial disparity in lynching (73% victimization borne by 13% of the population is a 5.6x overrepresentation) reflects the <a href="http://www.unz.com/isteve/reporter-jill-leovy-lapd-should-arrest-more-black-male-murderers/?utm_source=feedly&amp;utm_reader=feedly&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=reporter-jill-leovy-lapd-should-arrest-more-black-male-murderers">racial</a> <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/race-and-rape.html">disparity</a> in crime, yet EJI specifically condemns the contemporaneous public figures who pointed this out.</p> <p>No public figure points this out today, and black violence against white victims isn’t even A Thing in elite discourse, school curricula, or polite conversation.&#160; But that’s kind of the point:&#160; Obama and his followers invoke the crimes of the past to obscure the crimes of the present.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-10257513165650349342015-02-18T15:02:00.001-07:002015-02-18T15:02:37.403-07:00How about “Math Up”?<p>Congress is debating <a href="http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/02/11/congresswoman-to-colleagues-man-up-and-overhaul-military.html">recommendations</a> from the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission:</p> <blockquote> <p><font size="3"><strong>Congresswoman to Colleagues: 'Man Up' and Overhaul Military Benefits</strong></font></p> <p>Under the panel's recommendations, retirees younger than age 65 would initially pay 5 percent of the cost of a private plan, but the figure would increase 1 percent a year until reaching 20 percent of the premium -- or until they're eligible to switch into Medicare and Tricare for Life.</p> <p><strong>&quot;It's costing about, let's just say round numbers, $500 a year,&quot; [California Democrat Rep. Jackie] Speier said.</strong> &quot;A 1-percent increase is $5. I mean, I think we have to pitch this for what it is: You're going to have better health care, you're going to have a bigger network, and it's going to cost you one Starbucks Latte a year. Are you in?&quot;</p> <p>Commissioner Stephen Buyer responded, &quot;Bingo. Thank you.&quot;</p> <p>Buyer, a former Republican congressman from Indiana who headed the Veterans' Affairs Committee, also noted that <strong>working-age retirees paid a bigger share of their health care costs in the early 1990s. &quot;In 1994, when it started, it was a 27-percent premium,&quot; he said. &quot;It's eroded to 5 percent.&quot;</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>On the one hand, I have always conceded that expecting premiums to keep pace with costs is not inherently unreasonable.&#160; Whether 1994 is the appropriate benchmark is another question, but retirees have had their Tricare premiums more-or-less frozen for the last 2 1/2 years while health care costs have (presumably) increased, and that generosity is unsustainable.</p> <p>But Jackie Speier doesn’t understand the math (and neither apparently does commissioner Buyer).&#160; The proposal doesn’t increase our premiums by 1% of our current <em>cost-share</em> per year.&#160; The proposal increases our premiums by 1% of the <em>total cost</em> per year.</p> <p>My current Tricare premium cost-share is (I just checked) $46.32 per month, $555.84 per year.&#160; This, I think, is the “$500” to which Speier refers.&#160; If this is indeed 5% of a retiree family’s health care costs, then those costs run to $11,1116.80 per year.*&#160; It is 1% of <em>this</em> number that the commission is recommending that our premiums be increased <em>every year</em> until they reach 20%; by the end of it, I’ll be paying an <em>extra</em> $1667.52 per year, <em>plus</em> 20% of whatever increase in health care costs occur between now and then.</p> <p>Now, this may, or may not, be “fair”, and in any case it probably won’t drive us to homelessness.&#160; But it’s more than the cost of a yearly Starbucks latte**, and it would be nice if Congressional Democrats stopped pretending otherwise.</p> <p>* This plan includes no dental services, and involves additional costs for any drugs or services received from a civilian provider.</p> <p>** I suppose that this number is closer to a Starbucks latte <em>per day</em>, but I’m not sure . . . because I don’t go to Starbucks every day, and neither does anyone else I know, precisely because of these kinds of prices.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-32806018091402993452015-02-09T03:13:00.000-07:002015-02-09T03:13:00.061-07:00Burning the Witches, 2015<p>So there was a measles outbreak at Disneyland.</p> <p>I should start this post by saying, in the vain hope of heading off some small amount of the hate it will provoke, that my family were vaccinated on the standard schedule.&#160; We're conformists that way.</p> <blockquote> <h3><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/27/jail-anti-vax-parents-vaccines-cdc-measles-disney-world-california-column/22420771/">Jail 'anti-vax' parents: Column</a></h3> <p>Put simply, no person has the right to threaten the safety of his community. Like drunken drivers, the unvaccinated pose an imminent danger to others. They pose a lethal threat to the most vulnerable: the <a href="http://www.yourdictionary.com/immunocompromised#wiktionary">immunocompromised</a>, such as HIV or cancer patients, and infants who have yet to receive their vaccines.&#160; Anti-vaccine parents are turning their children into little walking time bombs. They ought to be charged for endangering their children and others.</p> </blockquote> <p>This strikes me as not quite right.&#160; <em>People with measles</em> endanger the safety of others, be they infants, immunocompromised, or simply unlucky.&#160; Had Alex Berezow asserted a moral obligation on the part of the sick, or even the exposed, to quarantine themselves, he would have been on much firmer ground.&#160; But an unvaccinated child doesn't turn into a &quot;walking time bomb&quot; simply by turning a-year-and-a-day without a vaccine.&#160; Indeed, he doesn't turn into a &quot;time bomb&quot; at all; the metaphor fails because the disease doesn't spontaneously generate.&#160; If you get it, you got it from somebody who also has it.</p> <p>People who elect to forgo vaccinations may be misguided, and indeed, the California outbreak ought to provoke anti-vaxxers to recalculate their priors (<a href="http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/measles-vaccines-kill-more-than-measles/">though perhaps not</a>).&#160; But I don't believe they are any more evil than the year-less-a-day infants because I don't see them as any more vulnerable than those infants, any more likely to spread the disease than those infants.&#160; The <em>exact same </em>public health argument in favor of keeping the year-and-a-day child isolated from the rest of us applies to the year-less-a-day child.&#160; In fact, if <em>everyone </em>were vaccinated on the standard schedule, infants and immunocompromisees would <em>still </em>be at risk from each other.</p> <p>It's odd, though, that for all the talk of jailing non-conformists, I suspect (admittedly without citation) that most of these outbreaks originate outside the U.S., especially in poor countries with much lower rates of vaccination and much higher probability of having their citizens here illegally.&#160; Yet nobody in the media wants to talk about the threat of our derelict border control and illegal immigrant policing poses to everyone, conformists and non-conformists alike.</p> <p>Funny how that works.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-57261281373552125332015-02-02T02:06:00.000-07:002015-02-02T02:06:00.454-07:00Choosing Chaste<p><a href="http://johnreidblogs.com/2014/12/08/im-virgin-youre-can-still-date/">Good Grief</a>.&#160; Does late-stage Evangelicalism do anything other than validate our worst instincts?</p> <blockquote> <p>I am a virgin by choice and will be until my wedding night. But if my future beloved has engaged in pre-marital affairs I do not consider that <em>in itself</em> to be a deal breaker. Why?</p> <p><strong>Because I believe in the power of restoration. </strong></p> <p><strong>I believe that decisions of the past can remain there. </strong></p> <p><strong>I believe that ou</strong><strong>r pasts do not necessarily define our present. </strong></p> <p><strong>I believe that the love of today is not necessarily tainted by relations of the past.</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Fine words . . . and also <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2010/09/premarital-sex-causes-divorce.html">empirically false</a>.&#160; But the point is:&#160; given that Christian women are <em>already</em> eager to find reasons to ignore the boring lifelong churchgoers in their midst in favor of excitingly pre-selected men who show a glimmer of tame-ability, <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2010/07/older-sons-burden.html">what kind of incentives</a> are we presenting to young Christian men?</p> <ul> <li>Exercise <em>extreme</em> self-restraint (or alternatively, organize your life in such a way that self-restrain is seldom called upon) in a commitment to chastity and discover that not only will Christian girls hold your inexperience against you, but your own church’s leadership will discourage them from seeing even relative merit in your sacrifice; OR</li> <li>Enjoy both the physical pleasure and increased self-esteem that come from sexual conquest, and in the event you go to church to “find a nice girl and settle down”, you will enjoy better success precisely because of your prior (or “prior”) life of sin.</li> </ul> <p>I can’t think of a better way of alienating the loyalty of the church’s young men.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-39714876218615859932015-01-20T01:50:00.000-07:002015-01-20T01:50:00.621-07:00Movie Tears<p><a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/which-movies-make-grown-men-cry/">FiveThirtyEight</a> (H.T.: Ace) takes a survey to find out what movies make grown men cry:</p> <p><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-ltWI_kIE9qE/VLtC1tV705I/AAAAAAAABZ8/SF0OVQLY5FA/s1600-h/hickey-moviecry-213.png"><img title="hickey-moviecry-2[1]" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="hickey-moviecry-2[1]" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-3EWSQhoE0ts/VLtC2CHSyUI/AAAAAAAABaE/leaLlXJTatI/hickey-moviecry-21_thumb1.png?imgmax=800" width="279" height="523" /></a></p> <p>Meh.</p> <p>Don’t misunderstand me.&#160; It’s not that these movies aren’t good.&#160; Many of them are great.&#160; (And a few are nigh unwatchable.&#160; Titanic?&#160; Srsly?)&#160; But with the exception of <em>The Lion King</em>, I don’t remember actually shedding tears during any of them.</p> <p>And would it not be more accurate to speak of crying during movie <em>scenes</em> rather than whole movies?&#160; Even mediocrities can sometimes pull off an emotion-provoking scene.</p> <p>I thought about it for a while and came up with a list of movies that have successfully jerked Φ’s tears.&#160; I have organized them by what about the scene made it compelling.&#160; These are not endorsements, mind you; some of the movies are pretty silly.&#160; Nor do all these scenes succeed as well on repeated viewings.&#160; And the scenes are seldom actually <em>sad</em> in the way we think of sad things that ought to bring tears.</p> <p><strong>Art for its own sake.</strong></p> <p>Sometimes, I can get emotional over sheer creativity.&#160; Disney seems especially good at this.&#160; “The Presentation of Simba”, did things I hadn’t seen in an animation before, like adjust focus from ants to Zebras and track ZaZu’s’ flight over his shoulder.&#160; (These elements contribute to the scene’s majesty, which is itself emotional.)&#160; “I want much more than this provincial life” was brilliant in its virtuosity; didn’t that song win an Oscar nomination? (as we will see, music factors heavily into the emotional power of all these scenes.) Ralph’s first entry into Power Strip Central in <em>Wreck-it Ralph</em> was similarly striking, not for the animation, which by 2013 was pretty standard, but for the concept itself:&#160; a power strip as a terminal for video game avatars!</p> <p>For a non-animated example of the emotional power of creativity, I mention the “Carousel Presentation” from the final episode of the <em>Mad Men</em>, Season 1 (sorry in advance for the crappy video; it seems to be all YouTube had):</p> <p><iframe height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/uv3DShxwjy0" frameborder="0" width="420" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p>I don’t actually know the story of the marketing strategy behind Kodak’s Carousel, but I’m old enough to be overwhelmed by the flash of recognition:&#160; I remember those!</p> <p>Now I just want to cry over how far the series has fallen.</p> <p><strong>Triumph Over Adversity</strong></p> <p>A movie most of you have no doubt forgotten is <em>Renaissance Man</em>, in which Danny DeVito undertakes to teach literature to a group of underperforming Army basic trainees.&#160; One of them had a father killed in action many years prior; DeVito looks into the case and convinces the army that the man’s heroism hadn’t been properly recognized.&#160; At graduation, the trainee accepts on his father’s behalf the Silver Star.&#160; Now, as this list demonstrates, my eyes moisten a lot during movies, but this scene was the closest I ever came to actually breaking down.</p> <p>An honorable mention goes to St. Crispin's Day:</p> <p><iframe style="height: 182px; width: 420px" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/wHYeDqEngxU" frameborder="0" width="465" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p>“The Speech” from <em>The Kings Speech</em> was the moment to which the entire movie built and invested with both personal and historic significance.</p> <p><em>Wreck-it Ralph</em> again, for “Shut Up and Drive”:</p> <p><iframe style="height: 227px; width: 420px" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/peM4idXEyM8" frameborder="0" width="465" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p><em>Forest Gump</em>, for “Run Forest Run” (as a boy, when he breaks free from his leg braces.&#160; Yeah, I know it didn’t make any sense, but who cares?)</p> <p><em>Independence Day</em>, for President Bill Pullman’s Independence Day speech.</p> <p><em>Temple Grandin</em>, for Claire Danes’ standing up at the National Autism Society and riveting the audience with her personal story.</p> <p><iframe style="height: 277px; width: 420px" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vwJc6HkP8fc" frameborder="0" width="465" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p>That moment when she says, “I am autistic.”&#160; And every head in the room turns in her direction.</p> <p><strong>Innocence</strong></p> <p>Two scenes from <em>Apollo 13 </em>come to mind: </p> <p>When Marilyn Lovell tells her son that “something went wrong on your daddy’s spaceship”, he replies, “Was it the door?” – A reference to the 1967 fire that killed the entire crew of Apollo 1; </p> <p>When Jim Lovell’s elderly mother greeting the news by calmly replying, “If NASA could send a washing machine to the moon, my Jimmy could fly it.”</p> <p>And . . .</p> <p><strong>Miscellaneous</strong></p> <p>I’m not sure how to categorize the scenes below.&#160; You be the judge.</p> <p>Forrest Gump’s concern about this son:</p> <p><iframe height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ELEFzfI9RWk" frameborder="0" width="420" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p>“Is he smart?”&#160; The fear and longing that went into that question.&#160; (and one of the few scenes that didn’t require music for its impact.)</p> <p><em>Touched by an Angel</em>, “For Such a Time as This”:</p> <p><iframe height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ncxwaeJF97I" frameborder="0" width="420" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p>That moment at 6:52 when the congresswoman trades her gold locket for the freedom of one more Sudanese Christian slave.&#160; The backstory is that the locket contained a picture of her son Sam, whose death at an early age was the source of considerable bitterness.</p> <p><em>Return of the King</em>, “Arwen’s Vision”:</p> <p><iframe style="height: 172px; width: 420px" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MYddm500wzw" frameborder="0" width="465" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p>The backstory (for those of you living in a cave on Mars) is that Arwen is departing Middle Earth with her fellow elves when she has the vision of what she is abandoning:&#160; a family with Aragon.</p> <p><em>Moneyball</em>:&#160; “It’s a Metaphor”</p> <p><iframe style="height: 277px; width: 420px" height="277" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/cUa5UgcWlcw" frameborder="0" width="465" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p>Backstory:&#160; the Jeremy Brown metaphor is to Billy Beane himself, whose disappointment that the Oakland A’s lost the postseason made him miss that his use of statistics had revolutionized baseball.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-69593555685809426942015-01-16T03:00:00.000-07:002015-01-16T03:00:01.411-07:00Quality vs. Quantity<p><a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/">Scott Alexander</a>:<br />
<blockquote><p>– I had a patient, let’s call him ‘Henry’ for reasons that are to become clear, who came to hospital after being picked up for police for beating up his fifth wife.<br />
<p>So I asked the obvious question: “What happened to your first four wives?”<br />
<p>“Oh,” said the patient, “Domestic violence issues. Two of them left me. One of them I got put in jail, and she’d moved on once I got out. One I just grew tired of.”<br />
<p>“You’ve beaten up all five of your wives?” I asked in disbelief.<br />
<p>“Yeah,” he said, without sounding very apologetic.<br />
<p>“And why, exactly, were you beating your wife this time?” I asked.<br />
<p>“She was yelling at me, because I was cheating on her with one of my exes.”<br />
<p>“With your ex-wife? One of the ones you beat up?”<br />
<p>“Yeah.”<br />
<p>“So you beat up your wife, she left you, you married someone else, and then she came back and had an affair on the side with you?” I asked him.<br />
<p>“Yeah,” said Henry.<br />
<p>. . . .<br />
<p>When I was younger – and I mean from teeanger hood all the way until about three years ago – I was a nice guy. In fact, I’m still a nice guy at heart, I just happen to mysteriously have picked up girlfriends. And I said the same thing as every other nice guy, which is “I am a nice guy, how come girls don’t like me?”<br />
<p>There seems to be some confusion about this, so let me explain what it means, to everyone, for all time.<br />
<p>It does not mean “I am nice in some important cosmic sense, therefore I am entitled to sex with whomever I want.”<br />
<p>It means: “I am a nicer guy than Henry.”<br />
</blockquote><p>After hearing the above excerpt, Mrs. Phi speculated that the women "Henry" was getting were of "low quality", by which she primarily meant low social class. This would be consistent with Scott's psychiatric practice, which appears to be in Detroit. Mrs. Phi pointed out that that, in contrast, I, and likely Scott as well, had restricted my search for a wife to venues where I was likely to meet mostly girls from middle and upper-middle class backgrounds. And mostly, that's what I did meet.<br />
<p>Mrs. Phi was making two points: (1) that I would not actually envy Henry his particular conquests; and (2) that the women to whom I was marketing myself were not actually making quite the colossally bad decisions as Henry's were. (1) might be true, but perhaps only in hindsight. (2) is true as far as I know: among my own contemporaries, I only know of a couple of failed marriage, and those didn't involve domestic violence. Rather than dating Henrys, many of the girls I knew from church spent their twenties sitting around grousing about how we nerds weren't actually good enough for them.Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-45577647319512725472015-01-13T03:00:00.000-07:002015-01-13T03:00:03.408-07:00The Only Thing Worse than No Game is Bad Game<p><a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/">Scott Alexander's</a> 10k-word commentary on <a href="http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664">Scott Aaronson's</a> <i>Cri de Coeur</i>, linked by <a href="http://takimag.com/article/self_made_and_hyperwhite_steve_sailer/print">Steve</a> and others, is well worth the investment. Granted, Alexander avows that he is "97% on board with feminism", whereas my own on-board-with-feminism meter zeroed out in 1922 and has been running negative since the 70s. But Alexander has done his research and gives us a chapter-and-verse account of the feminists ongoing and relentless social persecution of nerds.<br />
<p>Among the piece's many quotables, I wanted to bring attention to this one: <br />
<blockquote><p>Any space with a four-to-one male:female ratio is going to end up with some pretty desperate people and a whole lot of unwanted attention. Add into this mix the fact that nerds usually have poor social skills (explaining exactly why would take a literature review to put that last one to shame, but hopefully everyone can agree this is true), and you get people who are pretty sure they are supposed to do something but have no idea what. Err to one side and you get the overly-chivalrous people saying m’lady because it pattern matches to the most courtly and least sexual way of presenting themselves they can think of. <b>Err to the other, and you get people hollowly imitating the behavior they see in famous seducers and playboys, which when done without the very finely-tuned social graces and body-language-reading-ability of famous seducers and playboys is pretty much just “being extremely creepy”</b>.</blockquote><p>This is a point I've made myself a couple of times: alpha behavior is really hard for us nerds to immitate in practice. Anyone who trots out a James Bond line with being, you know, <i>James Bond</i> is going to embarrass himself colossally. We have to find versions of ourselves that work for us, not versions that would work for who we wish we were, but aren't.Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-17202500525419692852015-01-08T07:17:00.000-07:002015-01-08T07:17:00.139-07:00The REAL Enemy<p>From Joseph Bottum’s <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/An-Anxious-Age-Post-Protestant-America/dp/0385518811">An Anxious Age</a></em>:</p> <blockquote> <p>After the attacks of September 11, 2001, I was at the Episcopalians’ National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., to participate on a panel to discuss violence and religion.&#160; The evening began with a prayer from Jane Dixon, the cathedral’s acting bishop, and her invocation was as revealing as any short speech could be of the concerns of the contemporary Episcopal Church.</p> <p>While asking the divine gifts of wisdom for the speakers and understanding for the listeners, Bishop Dixon was vague – not merely failing to name the name of Jesus but straining to phrase all her requests in the passive voice to avoid even naming God:&#160; “May we be given . . . , may it be granted to us . . .”&#160; When her prayer unexpectedly swerved toward abortion, however, her language suddenly snapped into hard specificity as she reminded God that “America at its best stands for the spread of right around the world, especially the right of women to choose.”&#160; The discussion that evening, she prayed, would not turn vindictive, for we could not condemn the destruction of the World Trade Center until we remembered that “even in the United States, people have bombed abortion clinics.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Bottum goes on to explain how representative this attitude is among the class of people from which Episcopalians are usually drawn.&#160; But I want to foot-stomp the perversity:&#160; just shy 3000 Americans had just been killed by Muslim terrorists, and Bishop Dixon wants to remind everyone not to lose sight of the <em>real</em> enemy:&#160; pro-lifers!</p> <p>Liberals have no loyalty to America and her people.&#160; They only have tribal loyalties to People Like Themselves, and designated minorities, be they blacks or Muslims, are mere weapons in their unyielding war against the hated conservatives.</p> <p>I remember reading how there was a surge in church attendance after 9-11 that quickly died off.&#160; If this was the message being preached, then who can blame people for losing interest?</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-51281901225795956342015-01-05T19:06:00.001-07:002015-01-06T06:38:53.779-07:00Establishment Treason, 1924<p>From Joseph Bottum, <em>An Anxious Age</em>, among other things a history of the decline of mainline American Protestantism:</p> <blockquote> <p>Early in the twentieth century a trend toward consolidation [among mainline Protestant denominations] began to take hold.&#160; Several things facilitated the trend . . . there was the fight between the fundamentalists and the modernists.&#160; Thoughtful observers had seen that fight developing for some time, but it would come to a head when the powerful liberal preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick delivered his famous 1922 sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win” at New York’s First Presbyterian Church, and Princeton’s conservative John Gresham Machen published his defining book, <u>Christianity and Liberalism</u> (1923).</p> <p>Part of the result was new fissures:&#160; Machen, probably the best American theological mind of his generation, would flee Princeton, moving to Philadelphia to found the more conservative Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929.&#160; but another part of the result was increased agreement about what was and what wasn’t the American Mainline.&#160; The liberal churches all felt they were under assault from a fundamentalist offensive that detested both their social gospel theology and their ecumenically minded church organization.</p> <p>. . . .</p> <p><strong>“Shall the Fundamentalists Win”” was not universally applauded at the time, even by the congregants at First Presbyterian.&#160; The local presbytery investigated Fosdick for heresy in 1924 (his defense counsel was the future secretary of state John Foster Dulles, father of the Catholic convert Avery Cardinal Dulles), and he resigned his pulpit – only to have John D. Rockefeller, Jr., build New York’s Riverside Church for him, an avowedly interdenominational church, the flagship of Mainline Protestantism in America.</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>A couple of terms need some clarification.&#160; First, the term “fundamentalist” in the 1920s referred, ironically enough, to Machen himself; ironically, because the self-described fundamentalists of today would be loathe to embrace Machen for reasons having little to do with modernism.</p> <p>Second, “social gospel” isn’t just (or isn’t even) “good works”; nor is it merely “social reform”.&#160; As Bottum explains, it is a complete repudiation of the core doctrines of Christianity, a substitution of faith in the saving work of Christ with an adversarial attitude towards the existing structures of civilization.</p> <p>So I found striking the extraordinary level of support for heterodoxy that the 1920s establishment was so eager to provide.&#160; We have grown accustomed to the elites of today acting out on their ethnic prejudices to wage war on America (though the Presbyterian mainline is far too irrelevant today to attract the notice of people with names like Zuckerberg).&#160; But Rockefeller?&#160; Dulles?&#160; They, too, were hard at work, using their wealth and status to destroy the moral foundation upon which their own success was built.</p> <p>The elites have been our enemies for a long time.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-41099149794907367772014-12-18T01:20:00.000-07:002014-12-18T01:20:00.068-07:00Cops: the Best Friends Blacks Ever Had<p>Charles Barkley (via <a href="http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/12/ferguson-contrasts-reason-versus-inanity/">Legal Insurrection</a>):</p> <blockquote> <p>We have to be really careful with the cops, man, because if it wasn’t for the cops, we’d be living in the <strong>wild-wild</strong> west in our neighborhoods.&#160; I think we can’t pick out certain incidents that don’t go our way and act like the cops are all bad.&#160; I hate when we do that. Think about it, you know how bad some of these neighborhoods would be if it wasn’t for the cops? [Emphasis added.]</p> </blockquote> <p>One of the underrated movies of the 1990s was John Milius’ <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107004/">Geronimo</a>, starring among others Gene Hackman as Gen. George Crook.&#160; Gen. Crook, by all accounts a skilled Indian fighter, was also a vocal critic of government duplicity in dealing with the Indians after their defeat and surrender, even going so far as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_Bear#Standing_Bear_v._Crook">contriving a court case</a> that led to the recognition of their <em>habeas corpus</em> rights.</p> <p>The movie shows Crook in a conversation with Geronimo, explaining to him, in essence:&#160; “The regular army is the best friend the Indian ever had.&#160; The most egregious atrocities against the Indians, like the Sand Creek Massacre, were committed, not by the Army, but by settlers organized into volunteer militias.&#160; What do you think they would do to you if we weren’t here to protect you?”</p> <p>I recalled this exchange while watching the recent rioting in Ferguson, MO and elsewhere, noting with some irony that while the protestors were demonstrating their “fear” of the police by taunting them to their faces while breaking all manner of laws, the police themselves were not only conspicuously failing to protect the <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/bosnian-community-in-st-louis-outraged-over-fatal-hammer-attack/article_9f15bf49-c8b7-5bc3-8671-ac291f666084.html">lives and property</a> of Ferguson residents but busy preventing whites from defending themselves.</p> <p>A case in point:&#160; a group of former soldiers with the Oath Keepers organization volunteered to provide security to Ferguson businesses last week, stationing themselves on rooftops overlooking the street.&#160; But the police <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/police-shut-down-mysterious-oath-keepers-guarding-rooftops-in-downtown/article_f90b6edd-acf8-52e3-a020-3a78db286194.html">ordered them to disperse</a> while allowing a group of armed <em>blacks</em> to <a href="http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/black-residents-protect-white-owned-store-ferguson">provide a similar service</a> to one business.</p> <p>A second case in point:&#160; a driver attempted to <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/motorist-hits-crowd-members-pulls-gun-at-central-west-end/article_d9ccebc6-258d-5b58-9f43-a9f45b2ab84e.html">drive through an intersection</a> being illegally blocked by protestors.&#160; He didn’t injure anyone, but the protestors surrounded his car and through a brick through his rear window.&#160; That strikes me as a circumstance justifying the lawful use of deadly force in self defense, but the driver was arrested merely for <em>displaying</em> his weapon in response.</p> <p>When I combine these with the George Zimmerman and Theodore Wafer cases, I&#160; have reached the point where I am less afraid of having to deal with black criminality (I’m well-armed and a pretty good shot) than I am of what happens when prosecutors show up second guessing every self-defense decision I had to make.&#160; It’s pretty clear that the police are neither in theory nor in fact capable of protect me, only capable of arresting me once I protect myself.</p> <p>Thought experiment:&#160; what would happen if the police disappeared?</p> <p>In my own case, probably nothing.&#160; Phi’s lily-white little burg is a disproportionate home to, um, a powerful demographic who by non-transparent means are able to issue the necessary threats and bribes and make problems go away.&#160; Hence, our police force is able to do its job and keep our community free from aggravation by both the criminal underclass and Eric Holder.&#160; So, if the police disappeared, more of us would carry guns, but life would likely go on as before once the word got out.</p> <p>But other communities are not so fortunate.&#160; Barkley’s “wild west” analogy is more true than he realizes.&#160; It’s not just that blacks would start shooting each other even more than they currently do (if that is even possible).&#160; It’s that at some threshold of aggravation, citizens would organize and arm themselves and <em>take care of the problem.</em>&#160; And no, it wouldn’t be pretty, or just, or especially scrupulous about non-combatants anymore than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chivington">John Chivington</a> was.&#160; But it would be <em>effective</em> in a way that our present social and law-enforcement policies are not.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-42580188320222285022014-12-15T03:00:00.000-07:002014-12-15T03:00:00.799-07:00Time Travelers<p>I have never watched the TV show <em>Modern Family</em>; thus, I had no idea who Ty Burrell is; thus, I did not detect any gay adoption metaphor in the Dreamworks movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0864835/">Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman</a>.&#160; Neither had I ever seen, unless in passing, the characters from the <em>Rocky and Bullwinkle Show</em>; thus I evaluated the movie on its own terms rather than in comparison to the old serial.</p><p>Result:&#160; I really, really liked this movie.&#160; The characters are funny and likeable, the story is heartwarming with a minimum of preachiness, and the action scenes and animation are solid.</p><p>Ironically, it was my mother who suggested the gay angle; I had rather interpreted Mr. Peabody’s struggles with the menacing and intrusive social worker as those of a <em>father</em>.&#160; If a metaphor for gay parenting <em>was</em> intended, it would be somewhat ironic in that I would be surprised to see any bureaucratic hostility to gay anything in 2014.</p><p>A legion of critics reacted negatively to the character of Penny Peterson, Sherman’s classmate who initially bullies and provokes him.&#160; They claim this makes the movie “anti-woman”; I believe it was courageous of the filmmakers to show that, yes, girls in elementary school can bully too, and won’t hesitate to avail themselves of white knights if it doesn’t work out for them.&#160; But Penny character arc is perhaps too complex for a children’s animation.&#160; She eventually comes to admire and defend Sherman, but while the audience can see this developing, we aren’t really given to understand Penny’s internal motivation.</p><p>Take for instance the sequence where the children steal a ride in Leonardo da Vinci’s glider.&#160; [SPOILER ALERT:&#160; Mr. Peabody has a time machine.&#160; Oh wait, you already knew that from the series?&#160; Never mind, then.]&#160; Penny is the instigator, launching the glider and initially flying it.&#160; But then, in a steep dive, she insists that Sherman take the controls and “save us”.&#160; Which he does, much to his own and the audience’s satisfaction.</p><p>Penny’s action, encouraging Sherman to overcome his fears and creating a space where he can then assume a masculine, heroic role is a very mature and in some sense deeply socially conservative thing for her to do.&#160; But . . . why would she care about Sherman’s character development one way or the other?&#160; The realistic answer – because she has grown to love him and wants him to be the best he can be – isn’t especially supported by what we’ve seen up to then.&#160; And indeed, it may be too deep a theme for a children’s cartoon.</p><p>The bulk of the movie focuses on the&#160; relationship between Mr. Peabody and his adopted son.&#160; But in contrast to many cartoons, this is a two-way street.&#160; Peabody is required to reconcile himself to the prospect that Sherman will eventually grow up; Sherman, for his part, learns to appreciate that behind Peabody’s fussiness is deep fatherly concern for his wellbeing.</p><p>The critics whine on about how all this is formulaic.&#160; Fair enough.&#160; But it’s a <em>good formula</em>, generally achieving commercial success (though apparently not in this case) for valid artistic reasons.&#160; </p>Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-30754032903179906152014-12-11T03:11:00.000-07:002014-12-11T03:11:00.036-07:00Swinging for the Fence<p>I had been puzzling over the narrow preference for Republican candidates among Asian voters for the first time since the ‘90s, when Steve offered the <a href="http://www.vdare.com/articles/core-vs-fringe-contd-media-starts-to-catch-up-on-sailer-strategy">most plausible explanation yet</a>.</p><blockquote><p>Ironically, in 2014 the Democrats made themselves the Black Party by anointing the late <a href="http://www.vdare.com/posts/michael-brown-bully">Michael Brown,</a> the not-so-<a href="http://www.vdare.com/posts/honoring-the-gentle-giant-of-ferguson-with-armed-robbery">gentle giant</a> of Ferguson, the face of the Democrats. Not surprisingly, Asian voters appear to have reacted with dismay.</p></blockquote><p>Now, I don’t <em>know</em> if this is the reason; I haven’t personally talked to any Asians about the election.&#160; But Asians have a long history of operating small businesses in the inner city:&#160; East Asians in decades past, South Asians today.&#160; They are certainly aware of the dangers of operating shops serving that clientele.&#160; I can’t help but think that the security video showing 292-lb. Michael Brown assaulting and robbing what looks like a 140-lb. Indian or Pakistani store employee had a great deal of personal resonance.&#160; I also would expect that Obama and Holder’s unrestrained embrace of Michael Brown would be taken as . . . <em>off-putting</em> at a minimum.&#160; (Trumwill <em>&amp;C</em>. knock around <a href="http://hitcoffee.com/file/6943/">competing hypotheses</a>.)</p><p>If the Republicans were to ask me for electoral advice, I would suggest that, going forward, the party might make a play for the Asian vote by resurrecting their long-dormant (and mostly abandoned) <a href="http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/11/lawsuits-challenge-affirmative-action-as-discriminatory-against-asian-americans/">opposition to affirmative action</a>.&#160; Racial set-asides in college admissions for blacks and Hispanics is a complex legal and policy problem, but they generally come at the expense of Asians, and I don’t see how opposing them in pursuit of the Asian vote poses any problem for the Republican electoral coalition as it stands.</p>Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-60781947183734059632014-12-08T01:23:00.000-07:002014-12-08T01:23:00.582-07:00Thoughts on Rearmament: Getting There from Here<p>My intuition that the long-run effort to overcome the general prohibition on possessing privately owned weapons on military installations will require several steps.&#160; The Supreme Court must rule, as I expect it will, that “bear” means what it says, and that this component of the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states.&#160; The Court must also rule, as several state courts have ruled, that employees and customers of private companies, retail establishments, and government agencies retain the right to keep firearms in their vehicles when those vehicles are parked in lots that, while privately owned, are otherwise open to the public.&#160; Armed with such rulings, litigation to overturn prohibitions on military bases will become “ripe” in a way that it presently is not.</p> <p>Politically speaking, while I am not especially optimistic, I nonetheless hope that a change in administration will encourage military commanders to experiment with more relaxed rules.&#160; For instance, they could allow base employees to store unloaded POWs in their locked vehicles.&#160; True, that wouldn’t prevent the next Nidal Hassan, but at least we would be allowed the means of self-defense on our commutes.</p> <p>I’ve been thinking about the firearms handling procedures as they were implemented at ISAF and considering how they might be applied to stateside bases.&#160; As I have written, deployed personnel other than Security Forces, while armed, were required to keep our weapons unloaded while in garrison.&#160; We loaded the weapons when we went “outside the wire”, but to do this we were expected to use something called a “clearing barrel”.&#160; A clearing barrel is basically a sand trap for bullets, a barrel of sand with an opening through which we stuck the muzzles of our weapons while loading and clearing them.&#160; The SF also follow these procedures; stateside, in fact, they are attended with some ceremony, though like everything else they are relaxed during deployments.&#160; But even in Afghanistan, vehicles entering and exiting the installation are expected to stop inside the gate and its riders to exit and use the barrels for loading and clearing.&#160; All this is on the theory that loading and clearing present an elevated risk of either accidental discharge or forgetting about that round we left in the chamber.&#160; Which is fair enough, I suppose, although I’d like to see the numbers on accidental discharges into clearing barrels.</p> <p>These front-gate procedures were relatively easy to follow on deployments when there was very little gate traffic.&#160; Obviously that’s not the case on stateside bases with thousands of commuting employees – and likely hundreds of concealed carry licensees – entering and exiting the base every day.&#160; I suppose it would be possible to set up a clearing barrel park at the front gate, but I doubt that base commanders would be that motivated.</p> <p>The commanders could require that firearms be cleared before arriving at the front gate, but that would present the danger of commuters trying to steer with their knees while they fumbled through the unloading of their pistols on the drive up.&#160; (I know this would happen because it’s exactly what I would try to do.)</p> <p>Commanders could allow personnel to drive onto the base with loaded weapons but insist they be unloaded before being locked in the car.&#160; But this would be performed without those sacred clearing barrels, so that’s out.</p> <p>Commanders could tell us, go ahead and leave your weapons loaded while kept in the vehicle.&#160; But even I would be reluctant to recommend that.</p> <p>Commanders could say, well, let’s follow deployment rules:&#160; everybody can bring their weapons into their buildings, but they must be unloaded prior to entry, for which purpose we’ll keep clearing barrels at the building entrances.&#160; This approach strikes me as the most reasonable, and therefore the most unlikely.&#160; There are too many old ladies in government service that would clutch their skirts at the thought of male coworkers being armed.</p> <p>So I must admit, I’m not seeing any procedures that would satisfy even well-intentioned stakeholders.</p> <p>* The parking lots of government agencies are technically <em>public </em>property, though I can’t predict what bearing that will have.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-86561271317117232572014-12-04T03:00:00.000-07:002014-12-04T03:00:01.282-07:00Thoughts on Disarmament<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/11/12/how-not-to-think-about-gun-control-laws-or-speech-restrictions/">Volokh</a> writes:<br />
<blockquote><p>[A]a common argument against allowing people to carry weapons in public is that even otherwise law-abiding people might get angry, get drunk, or needlessly create or escalate a confrontation if they had a gun, and as a result unnecessarily kill or injure someone. True, the argument would go, such laws aren’t going to protect us against mass murderers or even armed robbers, who are obviously willing to deliberately violate many laws that are much more serious than gun control laws. But the carry restrictions might protect us against people who are law-abiding when they have time to deliberate (when they decide whether to carry a gun), but who can do something wrong or foolish on the spur of the moment (such as misuse a gun that they did decide to carry).</blockquote><p>Volokh goes on to suggest that such a scenario doesn't seem to actually materialize very often among lawful concealed-carry permit holders. Indeed, I'm aware of only one instance in which it fairly describes the facts. It may be true that there exist certain . . . demographics among whom violence is casually resorted to as a means of settling disputes over "respect", a problem that the availability of firearms exacerbates. But those people seldom qualify for permits.<br />
<p>Nor, for that matter, admisson to the armed services. I was thinking about this in the context of the <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2014/11/perks-of-power-continuing-series.html">general prohibition</a> against possessing firearms on stateside military installations. The prohibition doesn't apply to base residnets, who are allowed to keep guns in their quarters (except dormitories) as long as they are registered with Security Forces and stored in a safe and allowed to transport them on and off base for lawful purposes. But the much larger population of personnel who commute to the base for work are not allowed to bring weapons with them, even kept in their cars. This prohibition is enforced by the honor system: while incoming vehicles are in theory subject to search, this has never actually happened to me in the 23 years I have been commuting to military installations.<br />
<p>This prohibition is in dramatic contrast to <i>overseas</i> installations in conflict theaters. Throughout Afghanistan, for instance, all soldiers and many civilians are technically <i>required</i> to be armed at all times unless doing PT, although at ISAF this requirement went unenforced. With the exception of Security Forces and flag officer bodyguards (yes, generals had personal bodyguards), our weapons were to be kept unloaded while on post. "Unloaded" in this context means that the full magazines were kept in a separate pouch from the holstered or slong weapon. Loading the weapon would add, depending on the individual, around a full second to the time it would take to deploy it. I can only assume that this requirement was an effort to prevent accidental discharge, but it would provide very little deterrent against murder, deliberate or otherwise.<br />
<p>So the military has abundant experience with both (a) prohibition and (b) open carry*, and the relative risks each pose. I don't have at my fingertips any data on violent crime rates in deployed vs. stateside locations, except to say that if there were criminal uses of firearms at ISAF HQ while I was there, I never heard about them. There were <br />
and are plenty of <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/08/green-on-blue_attack.php">green-on-blue attacks</a>, but I will leave it my readers to figure out how our soldiers being murdered by our "allies" in the field bears on this discussion.<br />
<p>What about stateside installations where carry is prohibited? The Nidal Hassan and Aaron Alexis bodycounts dominate the statistics and headlines of the last five years. But crime is <a href="http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/4573381/">not unheard of</a> on our disarmed military installations, and its not especially clear what the prohibition accomplishes.<br />
<br />
* At ISAF, there was no prohibition on concealed carry. I knew an officer that carried in a paddle holster under his ABU blouse. But paddle holsters weren't issued, so few people had them.Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-32988632810050032522014-12-01T03:39:00.000-07:002014-12-01T03:39:00.182-07:00Standing in Line 2<p>I wound up my <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2014/04/standing-in-line.html">April article</a> on the <em>Peruta</em> case with:</p> <blockquote> <p>It will be interesting to see if the standard [for standing] suddenly gets lowered for HCI's benefit.</p> </blockquote> <p>Well, color me impressed:&#160; The 9th Circuit <a href="http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/11/9th-circuit-denies-en-banc-hearing-of-peruta-2a-case/">denied intervention to everybody</a><em></em>, including the state of California.</p> <p>As Andrew Branca points out, this doesn’t really matter:&#160; other 2nd Amendment cases pending in the 9th already have more motivated defendants than the San Diego sheriff and will likely be appealed when the 9th rules against them.</p> <p>Still, though, having had my side in this position, I can appreciate what must be California’s frustration.</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-44860231925606514662014-11-27T03:00:00.000-07:002014-11-27T03:00:00.535-07:00Happy Thanksgiving<blockquote><p>Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience. </p><p>Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings. </p><p>William Bradford </p><p>Ye Governor of Ye Colony </p><p>1623 </p></blockquote>Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-13243088747922863302014-11-24T06:04:00.000-07:002014-11-24T06:04:00.157-07:00Reversing Preemption<p>So, Washington State voters approved <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/392112/its-right-keep-and-bear-arms-stupid-charles-c-w-cooke">I—594</a>, a ballot initiative that prohibits all private firearms transactions and requires County Sheriff approval for gun purchases.</p> <p>So here is a legal question, intended in all seriousness:&#160; why is it that when a state passes a law against illegal immigration that <em>directly mirrors</em> federal law, the courts step in and say, no, federal law is “preemptive”, which means that states are forbidden from controlling illegal immigration in exactly the ways that federal law requires the federal government to do, but which it then neglects.</p> <p>But when a state passes a gun-control law that goes <em>over and beyond</em> federal law, there is nothing preemptive about federal gun control:&#160; states are perfectly free, except as constrained by the 2nd Amendment, to pass whatever additional gun restrictions they choose.</p> <p>I ask this because, whatever it is that’s different between federal immigration law and federal gun control law, I want to reverse.&#160; I want to preempt states from imposing gun control above federal law, but allow them to impose restrictions on illegal immigrants without limit.</p> <p>What kind of legislation would accomplish this?</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-9524092119751969002014-11-20T05:10:00.000-07:002014-11-20T05:10:00.107-07:00Perks of Power (A Continuing Series)<p>Our base commander periodically convenes “Town Halls” for the community, during which she takes audience questions.&#160; The answers to some recent ones were published via email:</p><blockquote><p>1) “Given the worldwide call for a fatwa on Americans and especially American military personnel, and given that we are all most vulnerable in our cars going to and from work, what is being done to allow those in the Flyover workforce who are properly licensed to be able to protect themselves during these extra vulnerable periods w/o breaking the law when entering base? I have already heard people say that they would prefer to face punishment than not to be able to protect themselves.” </p></blockquote><p>Now, I will stipulate that the ISIS terrorist threat to any particular individual working on a stateside military installation isn’t nearly the threat posed by, for instance, a car accident on his daily commute.&#160; That said . . .</p><blockquote><p><i>Answer: Anti-terrorism measures are in place to protect members of the Department of Defense, the Air Force, and Flyover AFB. If you see, hear, or learn of a credible threat, contact your Unit Security Manager, Operation Eagle Eyes at xxx-3937, or AFOSI at xxx-4553. Specific measures DoD employees should take to reduce any risk of threat are to vary the employee’s routine at least once a week by utilizing a different Base Entrance (Gate) than is normally used; be aware of surroundings at home, including using care regarding the wear of military-specific clothing and periodically checking around and under motor vehicles for anything suspicious; and to keep the following base contact emergency numbers handy:</i></p><p><i></i></p><p><i>- Emergency: (xxx) xxx-9111</i></p><p><i>- Law Enforcement Desk: (xxx) xxx-6516</i></p><p><i>- Alternate SFS #s: (xxx) xxx-6517, xxx-6841, xxx-6842, or xxx-2177</i></p><p><i>- Fire Dispatch: (xxx) xxx-3033</i></p></blockquote><p>Yes, we understand that ISIS terrorism is officially A Thing.&#160; And I’m all kinds of happy that, after the terrorist/madman has killed everyone available to him, your “First Responders” might happen along to put him down before he does the job himself.&#160; But the actual answer to the specific question is still to come:</p><blockquote><p><i><strong>The limitation of privately owned weapons falls squarely within the plenary powers of the Installation Commander. Base policy is not to overly restrict the possession of weapons by installation personnel. However, it is recognized additional controls beyond those in civilian jurisdictions are necessary. In the Flyover AFB Integrated Defense Plan, the Installation Commander has directed privately owned weapons will not be transported or possessed on Flyover AFB with the exception of storage in the&#160; SFS Armory, approved use of handguns at the Rod and Gun Club, and the use of some weapons in the course of approved hunting on the installation. Failure to comply with this direction may subject the violator to barment actions, administrative actions, and/or criminal prosecution.</strong></i></p></blockquote><p>My paraphrase: “Nyah, nyah, I’m in charge, you have to do what I say!”&#160; Here we aren’t even given the courtesy of a fig leaf of a justification for the policy.</p><p>On a positive note, the installation armory just happens to be located right next to the building where I work, and the armory personnel were efficient and courteous as they checked my pistol in and out. It's not something that I would do every day, given my assessment of the actual risk. But if I had to, I could. Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29763791.post-62874897302409753582014-11-17T05:49:00.000-07:002014-11-17T05:49:00.049-07:00Prole Baiting 101<p>Regarding the Shoshana Roberts catcalling video.&#160; To review:</p> <p><iframe height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/b1XGPvbWn0A" frameborder="0" width="460" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p><a href="http://www.unz.com/isteve/catcalling-video-by-neighborhood-you-cant-imagine-which-one-comprised-59/?utm_source=feedly&amp;utm_reader=feedly&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=catcalling-video-by-neighborhood-you-cant-imagine-which-one-comprised-59">Steve</a> covers the real estate angle.&#160; <a href="https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/shoshana-roberts-insider-info/">Roissy</a> has some background on the protagonist.&#160; I especially liked Megan Daum’s <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-daum-catcall-harrassment-video-20141106-column.html">op-ed in the LA Times</a> about detachment<em></em>, given my <a href="http://academywatch.blogspot.com/2014/06/sapr-day-scenarios.html">personal experience</a>.</p> <p>But what I want to do here is try to get at those elements that made Shoshana’s performance so successful at getting the desired reactions.&#160; Yeah, yeah, I know we’re supposed to believe that “all women suffer this treatment,” but I don’t think anyone actually believes this.&#160; Women who look, dress, and act like Shoshana get this treatment disproportionately, environmental conditions being equal.</p> <p>But what are those factors?</p> <p>Let me throw out some suggestions to get the discussion going.</p> <ul> <li><strong>Ethnic ambiguity</strong>.&#160; Shoshana apparently identifies as white, or in any case has been taken as white in all the commentary that analyzes the racial angle of the video.&#160; But she could pass as a mix of a number or races.&#160; In close-ups, she looks vaguely Hispanic, perhaps Puerto Rican.&#160; Very little black admixture, but opinions may differ.&#160; But I suspect that a lot of the people . . . reacting to her on the video considered her one of their own, and thus more accessible. </li> <li><strong>Clothing</strong>.&#160; Shoshana has stuffed her ample body into a tight-fitting black tee and jeans.&#160; Shot directly from the front as in the video, this conceals most of her curves from the viewers; in profile, and the close-up of real life, it’s going to attract that kind of attention. </li> <li><strong>Body language.</strong>&#160; Her posture is kind of slouched.&#160; She doesn’t carry herself in a confident purposeful way.&#160; In point of fact, she looks kind of like prey, and together with the factors mentioned above, she looks native to the, um, <em>vibrant</em> neighborhoods where she received the bulk of the attention, not just in class, but in that kind of going-nowhere-in-life demeanor of her surroundings. </li> <li><strong>Facial expression.</strong>&#160; I’ll say it again.&#160; It’s <em>rude</em> to walk by people under circumstances where eye-contact and a nod of greeting would be appropriate and not give it.&#160; When women I see every day do this at work, I grumble about it in blog posts.&#160; New York proles are apparently prepared to be more direct in their chastisement. </li> </ul> <p>There may be other factors I’m not getting.&#160; Any ideas?</p> Dr. Φhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14086783503820477029noreply@blogger.com3